With Mariners' support, Baseball Beyond Borders advances social reform

SEATTLE -- It was the fullest of full-circle moments this year at the RBI World Series: A young coach from a newly established Pittsburgh-area team squaring off against the very Seattle-area club with which he grew up, and with his longtime mentor at the opposing helm.

Nelson Cooper is now 26 years old, a successful banker and a social philanthropist in the Steel City, but it wasn’t long ago that he was an amateur in the Pacific Northwest playing for Bookie Gates at Baseball Beyond Borders, a program that was still in its infancy. BBB was founded by Gates in 2007 to provide opportunities for Black youth who want to continue playing ball after Little League but might not have the resources to continue to do so in high-cost programs such as elite travel ball.

Such a program was a perfect fit for a kid like Cooper. After playing in BBB, he went on to North Carolina Central University, where he graduated summa cum laude and played on its NCAA Division I baseball team. In 2020, he founded the Pittsburgh Hardball Academy, a comparable nonprofit program to BBB that strives to enrich the lives of youth via baseball and softball, with a focus on the underrepresented and underserved.

Pittsburgh Hardball was invited to the RBI World Series in Vero Beach, Fla., and was pitted against BBB in the annual tournament that brings together teams formed with the intention of reviving baseball in inner cities, hence the RBI moniker. Gates’ squad wound up winning, but the experience for Cooper -- and more chiefly, his players, many of whom had never been on an airplane before -- was far more rewarding than what occurred in the box score.

“The first and most important part of these programs [is that] they're mentoring organizations, using baseball as the conduit to have access to them and have them interested,” Cooper said. “We're using that as the thing to keep them interested. But I really think of both organizations as mentoring-based organizations; being that big brother, being that father figure, being the support for the family.”

BBB has long had ties to the Mariners, dating back to when MLB's RBI program was getting off the ground in the early 1990s. Gates was a product of that team, established a connection with the Mariners and leveraged that relationship when he founded BBB to seek support. A handful of fellows of the Mariners' Hometown Nine -- the team's initiative aimed to improve playing opportunities for young people of different races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, physical abilities and economic circumstances -- are BBB players.

Where the Major League team has made a big impact of late has been via grants for playing-field access, which has long been a challenge in the Seattle area. Through the Mariners' On BASE initiative, which Mariners community relations coordinator McKenzie Mitchell oversees, the team provided funding for BBB to practice at Driveline Baseball, the premier data-driven player development facility that many prominent big leaguers train at in the offseason. Earlier, they provided similar funding for other area batting cage practices and also hosted BBB for a breakfast at the ballpark event before the pandemic created in-person restrictions.

"Unfortunately, it can be costly to have field reservations, and renting out facilities is incredibly expensive," Mitchell said. "And a lot of organizations with similar models as Baseball Beyond Borders don't have the funding mechanisms to be able to afford that. So, facility access, fuel usage, transportation, those are all some of the main factors that are making specifically baseball more and more equitable, and things that our foundation is is working to find solutions for."

***

Cooper’s path from on-field success to off-field philanthropy is a model for what Gates set out to pave when he first established BBB. A native of Seattle’s Central District, which he says was 80 percent Black when he was growing up in the 1980s, Gates says that CD in his amateur days had many all-Black Little Leagues. But now, he says, BBB is one of the only all-Black teams in the region. Seattle has grown over the past decade-plus, but it has done so in huge part due to an infusion of high-salaried jobs in the tech, startup and life sciences industries, which has led to significant gentrification.

Yet the same obstacles Gates faced back then -- finding quality competition in his area, which led him to playing in higher-level leagues that were in more affluent neighborhoods -- are still present today, 15 years after BBB was founded. And while his efforts, including partnerships with the Mariners and other prominent sports organizations in the area, have moved the needle, there remains an uphill climb.

Asked what his biggest challenges were when getting BBB off the ground, Gates lists two: 1) creating awareness that there was a significant gap between playing opportunities for lower- and higher-income communities; and 2) regular access to playing fields in nearby proximity. To the first, BBB has created more playing opportunities for Black youth, expanding from roughly 40 to 150 players since, with nine teams. Yet the second remains, in his eyes, the program’s biggest barrier.

“We’re really trying to have [a] conversation around these fields that sit dormant. ... How do we as a community-based organization come in and support that?” Gates said. “Whether that takes on our time, talent, treasures to our ability to support and fund the retrofits of these spaces, these are ongoing conversations that we want to continue to have. But, obviously, who can we have [them] with, right? And who's willing to step up? Because that's part of the systemic reform that I think is needed to ensure that we increase physical activity amongst our communities.”

Seattle’s growth by roughly 300,000 new residents during the 2010s has also put pressure on infrastructure, raising concerns about equitable access to physical activity for youth, according to the most recent State of Play Report on the city and King County, administered by the Aspen Institute. The State of Play Report aims to uncover those inequities and recommend a path forward for access to high-quality youth sports in recreation, and it encompasses all communities, not just minorities.

Gates has an instrumental voice as a member of its advisory board. When he spoke with MLB.com earlier this month, he’d just wrapped a call with the Seattle Sports Commission discussing the economics of playing youth sports and the policy changes that could lead to reform.

A recent cost analysis conducted by BBB found that playing select baseball (i.e., travel ball for late-aged teens) cost $3,500 in the King County region, not including offseason training. BBB operates on a pay-what-you-can model, with a $1,500 asking rate. Most families are able to support that fee, but for those who can’t, others chip in. BBB also leans heavily on fundraising, sponsorships and online donations, and Gates applies for an occasional grant if the organization qualifies. Equipment donations from within the community help offset some of their operating costs, too.

“We were very reluctant to go after a grants model in the very beginning, because we didn't want our program model to solely be based off of grant funds,” Gates said.

As for policy challenges Gates seeks to change, one relates to historical use that prioritizes field access based on tenure. Gates says that there are instances where organizations that don’t necessarily reside in a particular community, but have longer tenure for a particular site or field with favorable amenities, receive access first. Another is the various joint-use agreements in many Seattle-area municipalities that exist between a municipality and a school. Gates argues that community-based organizations, such as BBB, should also have a seat at the table in those arrangements.

“You have so many competing demands within larger municipalities,” Gates said. “So, I can understand the resistance, but it doesn't help because obviously, schools have a competing interest in field space. Municipalities, they run their own recreation-based programs, there's a competing interest in securing that space. And then you have outside entities [such as BBB] that have a competing interest in securing that space.

“The sheer number of baseball organizations, whether that be Little League to the select travel ball to just your basic RBI programs, there are competing interests, and there's just not enough fields and facilities.”

These are the higher-level ideals that Gates believes can be focal points to change that would help minority organizations such as BBB.

“They are systemic barriers, so it's going to take a very [heavy] lift, because we aren’t able to just program our way out of it,” Gates said. “This work is going to have to require some reform on all levels, and I think pro sports teams are going to play a major factor in that.”

***

Today, Gates describes the Mariners as “thought partners” with BBB.

“We have community; they have a community,” Gates said. “They have communication; we lack communication. They have a network to be able to tell a story; we have a story. So, it's trying to find those abilities and those in ways that really create and strengthen a partnership, and so we're still having conversation around what that can look like. But they've been a tremendous asset for Baseball Beyond Borders and the broader baseball community.”

Mariners icon Dan Wilson, the longtime catcher and current ROOT Sports broadcaster, has been among the most prominent liaisons between the team and BBB.

“It's a great program. It's unique,” Wilson said. “And I just love the emphasis on the fact that it's not all about the baseball, and I think that's so important, and just the idea of community. Bookie, he really promotes that idea of community, and it's so vital, especially [in] today's world when we're raising kids.”

Wilson particularly admires the emphasis that BBB has put on academics in recent years, specifically its Moving Beyond 12 program, a comprehensive college/career preparatory curriculum for student-athletes. It features a series of capacity-building trainings delivering student workshops, family engagement activities, mentoring and one-to-one advising. MB12 works to prepare students for life after high school by connecting their skills, passions and desires to the necessary post-secondary education and training to achieve their goals.

It all ties back to community, which is what fostered Gates’ love for baseball at a young age, and it’s the essence of his everyday life today. His efforts are not just about giving back, but more so, about improving the social environment. The work he’s doing in Seattle has inspired at least one new such program via his former pupil in Pittsburgh -- who knows what barriers BBB can knock down next?